s, and adds, "These
I have proposed to myself to labour in, besides divers others, smaller
works: like him that shoots at the sun, not in hopes to reach it, but to
shoot as high as possibly his strength, art, or skill will permit. So
though I know it impossible to finish all these during my short and
uncertain life, having already entered into the thirtieth year of my
age, and having many unavoidable cares of an estate and family, yet, if
I can finish a little in each kind, it may hereafter stir up some able
judges to add an end to the whole:

"Sic mihi contingat vivere, sicque mori."

Richard Baxter, whose facility and diligence, it is said, produced one
hundred and forty-five distinct works, wrote, as he himself says, "in
the crowd of all my other employments." Assuredly the one which may
excite astonishment is his voluminous autobiography, forming a folio of
more than seven hundred closely-printed pages; a history which takes a
considerable compass, from 1615 to 1684; whose writer pries into the
very seed of events, and whose personal knowledge of the leading actors
of his times throws a perpetual interest over his lengthened pages. Yet
this was not written with a view of publication by himself; he still
continued this work, till time and strength wore out the hand that could
no longer hold the pen, and left it to the judgment of others whether it
should be given to the world.

These were private persons. It may excite our surprise to discover that
our statesmen, and others engaged in active public life, occupied
themselves with the same habitual attention to what was passing around
them in the form of diaries, or their own memoirs, or in forming
collections for future times, with no possible view but for posthumous
utility. They seem to have been inspired by the most genuine passion of
patriotism, and an awful love of posterity. What motive less powerful
could induce many noblemen and gentlemen to transcribe volumes; to
transmit to posterity authentic narratives, which would not even admit
of contemporary notice; either because the facts were then well known to
all, or of so secret a nature as to render them dangerous to be
communicated to their own times. They sought neither fame nor interest:
for many collections of this nature have come down to us without even
the names of the scribes, which have been usually discovered by
accidental circumstances. It may be said that this toil was the pleasure
of idle men